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ELLEN F. O'CONNELL/Staff Photographer
With rifle in hand, a trooper from Troop N arrives on the scene of a police incident on Alter Street between Third and Fifth streets in Hazleton on Wednesday.

Like Jessica Husty, who learned to dodge drug addicts seeking handouts, Hazleton residents find their own ways of dealing with the crime around them.

"I've been panhandled by heroin addicts. I've had to change directions because of ... unsavory characters at a corner," Husty said.

Most recently as she left the Hazleton YMCA/YWCA on a cold day, a man approached. He wore a light jacket over a hospital gown, said he was an addict and asked for money.

"I don't have anything for you," she told him, "but I can tell you you're going to freeze."

The addict has something in common with Hazleton police: both need money.

Police Chief Frank DeAndrea said the size of the city's force decreased to 35 officers from 40 officers six years ago, but crime isn't decreasing.

A graph that he saw recently on city-data.com shows that Hazleton's crime rate exceeded the national average for cities in 2011. A decade earlier, Hazleton's rate didn't reach half the national rate.

"It seems like the city has a larger propensity for violent crime," DeAndrea said.

In the past two weeks, police have investigated a homicide, a shooting stemming from an unknown dispute and an incident where a window on one of their unmarked cars exploded as if it had been shot. The police also seized drugs, cash and ammunition fro m the home of a man whom they apprehended after a drug deal.

Betty Probert said Thursday's drug raid, which was on North Laurel Street, where she supervises a crime watch, and late-February shootings give her pause while she walks her dog several times a day.

"In the past, you used to assume you were going to be safe in the daytime. Stay off the street at night, but things happen in the daytime as well," said Probert, who is a lifelong resident of Hazleton.

Walter Bringslid moved from New York to Hazleton 20 years ago.

"Hazleton was a very nice town 20, 30 years ago. It was a nice place to live," he said.

Now people shy away from the stores on Alter Street, where the police car window burst. Bringslid and a friend drive through the neighborhood in a car with a yellow roof light and door signs for the Alter Street Crime Watch.

"I'm not afraid to go out, but I understand how they feel. I wouldn't let my wife walk out at night," Bringslid said.

Taking action

Renee Baran covers up crime with a paintbrush while leading a Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce group called POWER! that paints over graffiti and plans to paint murals.

The group scheduled a second annual downtown cleanup on May 18 and will host movies outside the Hayden Tower at the Markle this summer, all with the intention of shifting the conversation away from crime and toward the investment in buildings like the former Markle, Hazleton National and Traders' bank buildings downtown.

"We don't plan events with the intention of reducing crime, but there is no denying that reduced crime rates come as a byproduct of a clean, active, positive community," Baran said by email.

Dominic Tolerico started a conversation about how to blunt crime on a Facebook page that he called Save Hazleton. The page drew 14,000 readers and 662 likes in one week before Tolerico brought a summary of the contributors' ideas to a meeting of Hazleton City Council.

"After reading much of what the community has to say, it's pretty clear that we need to fight this battle on several fronts. We need more law enforcement focused on violent crime, first and foremost. We need programs to keep the younger generation headed in the right direction and away from drugs and gangs. We need to fix the city's financial problems so we can fund the programs and the police by cutting waste, increasing accountability, and possibly involving an unbiased outside consultant to show us how similar cities have had success with financial problems," Tolerico wrote on Facebook after the council meeting Thursday night.

"I think the biggest loss we had in Hazleton was the clothesline. That's what a neighborhood watch was," David Minnick said. Neighbors hanging clothes chatted about who was taking a trip or strangers lurking in the alleys. Minnick keeps the chatter alive as head of the West Hazleton Crime Watch.

"Speakers come in and make us aware of local gang violence, talk to us on domestic abuse, elder abuse - so when we see something, we could recognize it," Minnick said. "The crime watch for many, many years has been an excellent tool if properly used by police."

The role of police

Hazleton's police chief said the events of the past two weeks reflect changes that have happened in the city. Until a few years ago, city residents were more likely to hear guns when a New Year's Eve celebration got out of hand than because someone fired at a person or property, DeAndrea said.

"Now we're hard pressed to go a week without a shots-fired call," he said.

Officers now patrol with rapid-fire weapons, shotguns and Tasers, but DeAndrea wishes he had more officers.

"You can have all the plans, all the rules, (but) if you don't have the people to enforce them, what good are they?" he said.

DeAndrea figures he can use about $85,000 from a federal grant that normally pays police overtime to buy surveillance cameras for high-crime areas. The cameras will mesh with a system fed by cameras purchased by businesses in the past few years. Police will be able to move the cameras as crime shifts to different locations.

After learning about shortages in the police department of everything from manpower to computers to road flares, Hazleton residents offered help.

One man stood at a street corner on Nov. 11, 2012, and asked motorists to donate to police, who stopped the unsupervised fundraiser.

On Thursday, Mark Rabo, a former Marine who now renovates homes for a living, said he was willing to renew his concealed weapons permit and start patrolling around his First Street home with similarly equipped neighbors.

City council stayed neutral on Rabo's proposal.

Council President James Perry thought the group could watch for crime without carrying weapons, but he credited Rabo with having good intentions.

"We don't want to turn away anyone if he wants to help the city," Perry said.

DeAndrea, who wasn't at the meeting when Rabo spoke to council, said he would never interfere with anyone's Second Amendment right to carry a firearm, but before taking a stance he wants to study whether Rabo's request would create liability for the city and whether other towns have backed similar groups.

"Right now, what I am trying to do is not enlist or solicit an armed crime watch. I'm trying to simply get as many people from the community willing to get involved and when they discover crimes to contact police," DeAndrea said.

"Phenomenal tips" from residents helped police investigate the murder of Angel Suarez Villalobos on Feb. 23, DeAndrea said after a person of interest in the shooting was taken into custody on a parole violation.

Keeping watch

For more than a decade, crime watches have fed information to police.

The groups' members gather information by looking out their windows, walking together or taking solitary drives.

One of the strengths of crime watches comes from the knowledge of their neighbors. They recognize breaks in a pattern, such as when a friend leaves letters in a mailbox overnight or when a work van parks where no one is home.

And they look for signs of drug sales.

"Is there a lot of in-and-out traffic at a given location? If there is, you're almost certain. You're at least suspicious," said Gene Cannon Sr., who helped start the Alter Street Crime Watch and joined the crime watch in Birch Knoll Estates when he moved there. "We have some sites that have been, and continue at this point to be, suspected drug sites, and the police are aware of them."

He figures most of the gunfights in town are between drug dealers.

"The only danger is being caught in the crossfire. I have never felt any danger in any place in the city," Cannon said.

Minnick, the West Hazleton watch leader, said he became aware of a girl who didn't arrive home from school when a friend of the girl's parents called him one afternoon about two years ago.

He called the girl's father and police in Hazleton and West Hazleton, and then he and other members of the crime watch went to playgrounds to question children. They learned the whereabouts of the girl, who was in a locked, second-floor room of a home where she didn't know the owners well, Minnick said.

"We had the little girl back in her father's arms within the hour," Minnick said. "We were able to tap in a resource."

Bringslid of the Alter Street watch said people know about crime but hesitate to share facts, especially in the Hispanic community.

"Kids were rioting a while back. Ladies talked to me. They said they saw a car and a license plate," he said. The women didn't want anyone to see them hand information to Bringslid so he told them to just shake hands. During the handshake, the woman passed a slip of paper containing the license plate number, which he forwarded to police.

"They feel threatened. Until that eases up, until people are willing to get out there and do something, we're going to have this crime going on," Bringslid said.

Kathy, who leads the Northgate Crime Watch that started in 2009, asked that her last name not be published. But in an email, she recounted how the crime watch helped solve a theft.

When a Northgate resident noticed three boys outside a couple's house, she telephoned the owner, who was alone because her husband had just left for work. The owner called DeAndrea's wife, Sandy, who is a state police trooper and had passed out business cards at a crime watch meeting. Sandy DeAndrea arrived after the boys left, but they were spotted late in the driveway of an elderly woman's house and apprehended in a van stolen from a church in New Jersey.

Like his wife, Frank DeAndrea attends meetings of crime watch groups. He encourages members of different watches to stay in touch so they can track vehicles and people across the city.

"With texting and emails, it's so easy to link all of these together," he said.

Other solutions?

While crime watchers provide extra lookouts for police, visitors to Save Hazleton suggested other ways to supplement the manpower of city police.

Tolerico said contributors to the page wish the city budget available online contained more details so they could hunt for money to transfer toward police. Several people who posted messages on Save Hazleton expressed concerns about illegal immigrants, said Tolerico, who wondered if city officials had ways of ensuring that residents were placed on tax rolls.

City Administrator Steve Hahn described a plan to track down businesses that owe $12,000 in license fees. Hahn also said Hazleton is using a collection agency to go after unpaid fines and fees.

When Tolerico asked about cross-training firefighters as police officers, Perry, the council president, said firefighters already help code officers enforce safety regulations.

Councilman Jack Mundie said he favors asking constables, some of whom have police training, to play a larger role in fighting crime.

State Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-116, hopes that state police could patrol in Hazleton.

State police helped city police and Luzerne County sheriff's deputies conduct saturation patrols after the 2006 murder of Derek Kichline, allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant, raised emotions in the city and led to the landmark city ordinance targeting illegals. Toohil said state police have patrolled in other distressed cities.

"I was hoping for a six-to-12-month period that they would come in and basically increase the amount of police that we have," Toohil said.

She also wants to ensure that the state police graduates enough cadets to replace troopers who retire.

"People are retiring and at the same time not putting new Pennsylvania State Police on the ground. It's something we're looking at from a funding aspect," Toohil said.

Toohil, who met in Harrisburg with DeAndrea, state police Commissioner Frank Noonan and representatives of the governor's office to discuss crime in Hazleton, also noted a crime summit held this winter in Reading.

There, Gov. Tom Corbett, U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey, congressmen, and state and city officials brainstormed about how police at all levels could benefit from working together.

In Hazleton, the public can join local leaders to discuss crime at Monday at the Wiltsie Center at the Historic Castle. WYLN organized the town meeting with a panel that will include a prosecutor, police chiefs, a drug counselor and school superintendent.

The collective approach suits Victor Perez of Dominican House, a Hazleton group that plans to offer after-school programs, music lessons and other activities such as a repeat of last summer's three-on-three basketball tournament to draw young people away from gangs.

"Bring everybody together," Perez said. "Working together we can stop the criminality and reduce the negative perception that people from the outside are taking. They think it is New York in the '80s. We have to stop it. We can do it together."

Even Husty, who sidesteps clusters of drug sellers and users on the streets, wants people of Hazleton and nearby towns to come together to fight crime.

Husty, who received a $10,000 settlement for medical care after being struck by a Hazleton police car last year, has written for permission to hold a rally against crime at City Hall.

"The whole town is affected," she said. "I definitely want to see more police with the vehicles and everything they need to do the job."

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

Hazleton area residents can join the fight against crime by joining any of six crime watch groups that meet regularly as follows:

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